Susanneh Bieber was awarded a fellowship at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art for the fall term to work on her second book project that explores American Regionalism across the fields of art, architecture, and urban planning.

Marta Gutman, VAF member and editor emeritus of Buildings and Landscapes has received many honors for her recently published book A City for Children; Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850-1950 including the CCNY Architecture Alumni Group of the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture Faculty Achievement Award for 2015, The University of Mary Washington Center for Historic Preservation 2015 Book Prize, and Honorable Mention in the 2013-2015 biannual award for the Gene and Adele Malott Prize for Recording Community Activism from the The Langum Charitable Trust.  Congratulations Marta!

VAF member Stella Nair, this past July has published an architectural survey and analysis of the Inca royal estate at Chinchero with the University of Texas Press.   According to the press release, At Home with Sapa Inca: Architecture, Space, and Legacy at Chinchero significantly increases our understanding of how the Inca conceived, constructed, and gave meaning to their built environment.

By examining the stunning stone buildings and dynamic spaces of the royal estate of Chinchero, Nair brings to light the rich complexity of Inca architecture. This investigation ranges from the paradigms of Inca scholarship and a summary of Inca cultural practices to the key events of Topa Inca’s reign and the many individual elements of Chinchero’s extraordinary built environment.

What emerges are the subtle, often sophisticated ways in which the Inca manipulated space and architecture in order to impose their authority, identity, and agenda. The remains of grand buildings, as well as a series of deft architectural gestures in the landscape, reveal the unique places that were created within the royal estate and how one space deeply informed the other. These dynamic settings created private places for an aging ruler to spend time with a preferred wife and son, while also providing impressive spaces for imperial theatrics that reiterated the power of Topa Inca, the choice of his preferred heir, and the ruler’s close relationship with sacred forces.

This careful study of architectural details also exposes several false paradigms that have profoundly misguided how we understand Inca architecture, including the belief that it ended with the arrival of Spaniards in the Andes. Instead, Nair reveals how, amidst the entanglement and violence of the European encounter, an indigenous town emerged that was rooted in Inca ways of understanding space, place, and architecture and that paid homage to a landscape that defined home for Topa Inca.

Trained as an architect and architectural historian, Professor Nair is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Core Faculty in the Archaeology Interdepartmental Program at UCLA. She coauthored (with Jean-Pierre Protzen) The Stones of Tiahuanaco: A Study of Architecture and Construction.

There is a wonderful article that provides an overview of the career of VAF member Tom Carter in the recent issue of the magazine of the University of Utah, where he is a professor emeritus.  Among other projects, the article mentions the work Tom is doing for the 2017 VAF conference in Salt Lake City. Congrats Tom on a wonderful career and a very nice profile!

http://continuum.utah.edu/features/the-stories-buildings-tell

The nominating committee of the Vernacular Architecture Forum (VAF) is seeking nominations for individuals to serve as members of the organization’s Board of Directors. Board members serve three-year terms. Individuals nominated this year, and subsequently elected, will begin service in June 2016.

The VAF is administered by a volunteer board composed of dedicated professionals and scholars from diverse disciplines who live and work in all parts of the United States and Canada. The Board meets twice a year, once during our Annual Conference in the Spring and again in the Fall. Board members are expected to attend these day-long meetings and participate in committee work throughout the year.

The committee also seeks nominations for the position of President-Elect to start in June 2016. In the spring of 2017, the President-Elect will rise to the position of President of the VAF for two years. Candidates for the position of President-Elect should be familiar with the organization’s disparate programs, have a vision for the future of the group, and possess significant leadership skills.

Nominations should be sent to William D. Moore at moorewd@bu.edu, preferably before October 15, 2015. Nominees must be members of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. Please include a short letter (not exceeding one page) indicating the position for which the person is being nominated and describing their qualifications as well as a short vita/resume (not exceeding two pages). Self-nominations are actively encouraged.

compiled by Ian Stevenson and Zach Violette

“Roadside Attraction: A Photographer Is Drawn to Retro Rest Stops.” Preservation, Summer 2015.

Agazarian, Dory. “Victorian Roads to Rome: Historical Travel in the Wake of the Grand Tour.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 37, no. 5 (October 20, 2015): 391–409. doi:10.1080/08905495.2015.1080883.

Benyamin, Jasmine. “Towards a (new) Objectivity: Hermann Muthesius, Photography and the English House.” The Journal of Architecture 20, no. 4 (July 4, 2015): 579–95. doi:10.1080/13602365.2015.1064985.

Bhattacharya, Sumangala. “‘Those Two Thin Strips of Iron”: The Uncanny Mobilities of Railways in British India.’” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 37, no. 5 (October 20, 2015): 411–30. doi:10.1080/08905495.2015.1081582.

Bower, Stephanie. Kentucky Countryside in Transition: A Streetcar Suburb and the Origins of Middle-Class ... Louisville, 1850-1910. Knoxville: Univ Of Tennessee Press, 2015.

Dearinger, Ryan. The Filth of Progress: Immigrants, Americans, and the Building of Canals and Railroads in the West. First edition. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2016.

Drexler, Carl G., ed. Historical Archaeology of Arkansas: A Hidden Diversity. First edition. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2016.

García-Esparza, Juan A. “Epistemological Paradigms in the Perception and Assessment of Vernacular Architecture.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 21, no. 9 (October 21, 2015): 869–88. doi:10.1080/13527258.2012.666755.

García, Guadalupe. Beyond the Walled City: Colonial Exclusion in Havana. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2016.

Gonda, Jeffrey D. Unjust Deeds: The Restrictive Covenant Cases and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement. Justice, Power, and Politics. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Harbusch, Gregor. “Work in Text and Images: Sigfried Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture , 1941–1967.” The Journal of Architecture 20, no. 4 (July 4, 2015): 596–620. doi:10.1080/13602365.2015.1069371.

Hart, Emma. Building Charleston: Town and Society in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World. Columbia: Univ Of South Carolina Pr, 2015.

Heard, Malcolm. French Quarter Manual: An Architectural Guide to New Orleans’s Vieux Carré. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015.

Herrington, Susan. “Fraternally Yours: The Union Architecture of Oskar Stonorov and Walter Reuther.” Social History 40, no. 3 (July 3, 2015): 360–84. doi:10.1080/03071022.2015.1043189.

Huebner, Anna. “Tourism and Cultural Encounters in ‘the Last Frontiers.’” International Journal of Heritage Studies 21, no. 9 (October 21, 2015): 862–68. doi:10.1080/13527258.2012.661752.

Jester, Thomas C. “Aluminum Finishes in Postwar Architecture.” APT Bulletin 46, no. 1 (2015): 41–49.

Kezer, Zeynep. Building Modern Turkey: State, Space, and Ideology in the Early Republic. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015.

Kimble, Lionel. A New Deal for Bronzeville: Housing, Employment, and Civil Rights in Black Chicago, 1935-1955. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015.

Kolnberger, T. “Between Water and Land: Urban and Rural Settlement Forms in Cambodia with Special Reference to Phnom Penh.” Urban Morphology 19, no. 2 (2015).

Laudun, John. The Amazing Crawfish Boat. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016.

Lennox, Jeffers. “The Geography of British, French, and Aboriginal  Interactions in Early Nova Scotia, 1726–44.” William and Mary Quarterly Vol. 72, no. No. 3 (July 2015): 423–61.

Maher, Neil M. “‘Work for Others but None for Us’: The Economic and Environmental Inequalities of New Deal Relief.” Social History 40, no. 3 (July 3, 2015): 312–34. doi:10.1080/03071022.2015.1043188.

Marr, Alexander Brier. “Scales of Vision: Kiowa Model Tipis and the Mooney Commission.” Winterthur Portfolio 49, no. 2/3 (June 2015): 93–125. doi:10.1086/683244.

McSweeney, Anna. “Versions and Visions of the Alhambra in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman World.” West 86th 22, no. 1 (March 2015): 44–69. doi:10.1086/683080.

Mikula, Maja. “Vernacular Museum: Communal Bonding and Ritual Memory Transfer among Displaced Communities.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 21, no. 8 (September 14, 2015): 757–72. doi:10.1080/13527258.2015.1020961.

Pollack, Deborah C. Visual Art and the Urban Evolution of the New South. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2015.

Rickly-Boyd, Jillian M. “‘It’s Supposed to Be 1863, but It’s Really Not’: Inside the Representation and Communication of Heritage at a Pioneer Village.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 21, no. 9 (October 21, 2015): 889–904. doi:10.1080/13527258.2013.807397.

Rovang, Sarah. “Envisioning the Future of Modern Farming: The Electrified Farm at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 74, no. 2 (June 2015): 201–22.

Seiter, Jane I., Michael J. Worthington, Barbara L. Voss, and Megan S. Kane. “Carving Chopsticks, Building Home: Wood Artifacts from the Market Street Chinatown in San Jose, California.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 19, no. 3 (September 2015): 664–85. doi:10.1007/s10761-015-0303-8.

Sîntionean, Codruţa. “The Preservation of the Chŏnju Hanok Village From Material Authenticity to the Themed Replica.” Future Anterior 12, no. 1 (Summer 2015): 57–75.

Smith, Monica L. “The Concept of Copies: An Archaeological View of the Terracotta Ornaments from Sisupalgarh, India.” West 86th 22, no. 1 (March 2015): 23–43. doi:10.1086/683079.

Sugarman, Joe. “Period Piece: A 19th-Century House in New Orleans Comes Back from Ruin.” Preservation, Summer 2015.

Thompson, H. A., and D. Murch. “Rethinking Urban America through the Lens of the Carceral State.” Journal of Urban History 41, no. 5 (September 1, 2015): 751–55. doi:10.1177/0096144215589939.

Tomory, Leslie. “London’s Water Supply before 1800 and the Roots of the Networked City.” Technology and Culture 56, no. 3 (2015): 704–37. doi:10.1353/tech.2015.0082.

Vossoughian, Nader. “From A4 Paper to the Octametric Brick: Ernst Neufert and the Geo-Politics of Standardisation in Nazi Germany.” The Journal of Architecture 20, no. 4 (July 4, 2015): 675–98. doi:10.1080/13602365.2015.1072232.

Walker, Julia. “Islands-in-the-City: Berlin’s Urban Fragments.” The Journal of Architecture 20, no. 4 (July 4, 2015): 699–717. doi:10.1080/13602365.2015.1075226.

Wilson, Katherine Anne. “The Household Inventory as Urban ‘theatre’ in Late Medieval Burgundy.” Social History 40, no. 3 (July 3, 2015): 335–59. doi:10.1080/03071022.2015.1043179.